


what's left over

by TheDawnHarbinger



Category: Trainspotting (Movies), Trainspotting Series - Irvine Welsh
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Drinking, Drug Addiction, Dysfunctional Relationships, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon, Rare Pairings, Spoilers, mentions of one-sided mark/franco, one day i'll write a story about people having good happy sex i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:54:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25715359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDawnHarbinger/pseuds/TheDawnHarbinger
Summary: somehow, their little group has been whittled away bit by bit, until – all of a sudden – it’s become just the two of them. just spud and the beggar boy.
Relationships: Daniel "Spud" Murphy/Francis "Franco" Begbie
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	what's left over

**Author's Note:**

> found this old wip gathering dust in the depths of my laptop and decided to post it. bit of a book-movie fusion and 100% fueled by my weakness for the rarest of rare pairs. 
> 
> in my defense! that bit in the books where franco saves spud's life by giving him mouth-to-mouth cpr, only to have spud puke on him? that bit? that qualifies as Peak Romance for the trainspotting crew. that's about as close to a tender kiss scene as they tend to get.

The man’s face is ruined. It’s gone. Spud stares at him blankly, at _it_ , trying to make sense of the abstract, disjointed mess of blood that – not thirty seconds ago – had been a perfectly respectable pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth.

He’d bumped into the man in the pub toilets and the man, having gotten the notion into his head that Spud was staring at him, had taken offense. His belief, fueled by lager and liquor and a general sense of aimless machismo, happened to be an erroneous one – Spud _hadn’t_ been staring at him. In fact, Spud, who had bought a handful of little blue pills earlier that evening from (from who—Rab? Gavin? A stranger?) _somebody_ , had been so busy trying to stay upright and not swallow his own tongue that he’d been entirely oblivious to the stranger’s existence. But he’d been unable to explain this to his new acquaintance, numb-tongued and stammering apologies, and the man’s first punch had split his lip open and sent him reeling. It had been a half-hearted, perfunctory sort of fight and, if Spud had been sober, he most likely could have held his own in it. As it was, he’d only been spared having his teeth kicked in by the arrival of Begbie, who had dealt with the problem with his own particular sort of diplomacy.

Now, the man is on his knees, struggling to stand while blood drips from his ruined mouth. Spud wishes that he wouldn’t, wishes he would just stay the fuck _down_ , and watches – too horror-stricken to look away – as Begbie hits him hard across the face. The man goes down. He doesn’t try to get up again.

“Cunt,” Begbie remarks, with an odd, matter-of-fact sort of satisfaction, and then, still staring down at the man; “Alright, Spud?”

There’s blood on the tiles now. He can’t stop looking at it. “Eh, sorry—what?”

“Ah _said_ , ‘alright’?”

“Fine,” Spud manages, daubing gingerly at his torn lip with the edge of one sleeve; he’s vaguely aware that it’s stinging a little, but the pills are still fizzing in his system and the pain can’t quite seem to reach him. “Fine. You know me, Franco. Jist one ay them cats whae’s got nine lives, likesay.”

And he _tries_ to smile, but he doesn't like the way that Begbie is standing, all tense and wound up as tight as a coiled spring, and he doesn’t like the wet, rattling noises that the man is making whenever he tries to breathe. He doesn’t like _any_ of it, and he wishes more than anything that he could be a thousand miles away. With Sick Boy, maybe, who’s gone up to London again. Or with Renton, who’s gone nobody-knows-where. Somehow, their little group has been whittled away bit by bit, until – all of a sudden – it’s become just the two of them. Just him and the Beggar Boy.

On the floor, the man moans, and Begbie kicks him, driving the toe of one scuffed-up boot into his side with rib-shattering force. “How many lives d’you think _this_ cunt’s got?”

“Aye, um—right enough,” Spud says uneasily, and casts around for something else to say, some innocuous remark, something to distract Begbie before they _both_ end up spending the night in the lock-up for aggravated assault. His train of thought (which has never exactly been the most reliable) goes skittering off the rails and he nods down at the boy and adds, choking on a nervous giggle; “Still, that’s...that’s a barry jacket.”

And it _is_ , too. A proper denim jacket, with a high collar and a tartan lining – the sort of thing that they sell in catalogues and you’ve got to save up for weeks to buy. He has a vague recollection of Renton having owned one quite like it, once upon a time, although he’d stolen _his_ out of a shop. Begbie considers the jacket for a moment, tilting his head to one side, and then gives its owner another dig in the ribs. “Right, you heard him, pal. Go on. Give ma mate yir fucking jacket.”

“Aw, Franco, don’t—”

“Listen,” says Begbie, all short, sharp syllables that cut through Spud’s drug-fried thoughts like a hot knife through butter. Warning signals, broadcasting loud and clear _Do_ you _want to be the one bleeding on the floor?_ asks that voice. _Do_ you _want to be the cunt making smart remarks?_ “If you ask me, ah’d say he’s getting off fucking lightly, wouldn’t you? If you ask me, _ah’d_ say the cunt’s lucky to be walking away from this at aw, considering the circumstances.”

So Spud takes the path of least resistance (a path he’s gotten _very_ used to treading in recent years) and waits, numb and useless, while Begbie yanks the man’s jacket off and thrusts it at him. Obediently, he shrugs it on and then stands by the sinks, squinting at his reflection in the grime-coated mirror. Despite the circumstances, he can’t help feeling faintly pleased by the effect; the denim’s a little bit scuffed from Begbie’s beating, but it’s warm and comfortable and suits him more than he’d expected it to. It’s a bit too big for him, particularly in the sleeves and around the shoulders, but he’s always been on the skinny side (“You’re an emaciated fucker, Spud,” Renton had told him once, because Renton had read _books_ and had therefore been able to use words like ‘emaciated’ in casual conversation) and he thinks the jacket helps with that. It fills out the lines of his narrow frame and brings a flush to his pale skin. It makes him look very nearly _alive_.

“How does it look?” he asks, hoping for a second opinion and spins in an awkward little half-circle, before instantly regretting it when the blood rushes dizzily to his head. Leaning up against the nearest sink to balance himself, he catches sight of Begbie and – for the first time that evening – sees the faintest flicker of a smile on the other man’s face. 

“It looks barry, Spud.”

Feeling oddly thrown by the compliment, Spud averts his eyes, his gaze skittering away to fix on the toes of his own boots. And he’s too slow to flinch away when Begbie – moving with a disconcerting speed – reaches out and slips blood-wet fingers under his chin, angling his head back up again. His grip is like a vice, impossible to resist, and so for a moment they only stare at each other, time turning elastic. Spud can _feel_ the breath rattling through his lungs, quicker and quicker, and there’s an unsteady heartbeat pounding in his veins, but it’s like it’s _Begbie’s_ heart and not his, like they’re the same person with the same lungs, the same heart, the same—

“—clean?” Begbie is asking him, and then, when Spud only gapes at him in surprise and stutters out something unintelligible, repeats the question more harshly, digging his fingertips deeper into the other’s skin. “Dinnae fuck aroond, Spud – you’re either clean or you’re not. End ay fucking story.”

His mouth feels like it’s as dry as bone as, desperately, he tries to get the words to line themselves up on his tongue. Begbie is watching him, but there’s something unnervingly _distant_ about the look in his dark eyes, like he’s staring straight through Spud and seeing— _what?_

( _he’s looking at us like he’s seen a ghost, like he’s seen—_ )

They stare at each other in breathless silence and, hanging in the air between them, invisible, is the spectre of Mark Renton.

Finally, Spud wets his lips and, breaking the silence with a quavering cough, banishes the unseen _something_ . “Aye, ah’m clean, Franco, ah swear. Eh, ah mean, ah’m no touching the skag, the heroin, ah’m pure done wi that. But ah’m not _clean_ -clean, ‘cause ah might have had some eccy, and, honestly, ah think it wis strong stuff, ‘cause ah’m pure feeling like, you and me, wir aw—”

“Aye, ah thought so,” says Begbie, cutting clean through the stream of nervous chatter with a laugh. “Yir eyes are blown tae fuck.”

His fingers, suddenly feather-light, glance briefly over Spud’s torn lip and then, in an instant, are gone as, abruptly, he turns away. The toilet door swings open, slams closed, and Spud is left alone with the man bleeding out on the floor, feeling wrung out and fucked up and utterly, _utterly_ lost. He wonders if he should call an ambulance. He wonders if he should throw up.

* * *

The next time the two of them head out for a night on the town, Begbie insists on going back to the same pub where he’d beaten the poor man in the toilets and Spud, his frantic protests ignored, is left to trail miserably after him. He’s wearing his smart new jacket (Begbie had insisted on _that_ , as well) and it feels like he’s got a target printed right across his back – he can’t shake off the idea that, at any moment, one or two of the stranger’s mates might show up looking for a bit of revenge. Petrified with anxiety, he’s too distracted to listen to Begbie’s stories with anything more than the bare minimum of attention, only nodding from time to time and making vague noises of agreement at what he hopes are the right moments.

“—and it’s like ah wis saying, the cunt didnae even put up a fight, ken?”

( _should get back on the skag again, ‘cause it’s pure brutal, being aroond him when ah’m clean like this—)_

“Eh, right on, Franco. Um.”

“Fucking disappointment to us and aw, ‘cause ah would’ve been happy tae—”

( _should have asked Sick Boy tae come wi us, or one of the others, safety in numbers—)_

“Right. Um...took the words right oot of ma mooth, likesay.”

Spud is too distracted, in fact, to pay any attention to the speed at which they’ve been drinking and it’s not until he gets up to take a trip to the toilets that it hits him all at once. Suddenly, the floor pitches and heaves underneath his boots, like he’s a kid who’s just gotten off a particularly dizzying ride at a fairground, and he stumbles, tripping over his own chair and rattling the dozen or so empty pint glasses which litter their table. Begbie moves lightning-quick to catch him by the elbow, steadying him, and Spud holds onto the other man’s shoulder gratefully. 

“You’re not pished _already?_ ” Begbie asks, his tone wavering between scorn and something which could almost be mistaken for fondness. They’ve been tossing back drinks at more or less the same pace, but his dark eyes are still quite clear and, beneath Spud’s fingers, he feels remarkably solid and steady. “Nae fucking stamina – that’s your trouble, Spud. Nae fucking stamina at aw, you cunt.”

“Ah’m alright,” Spud protests, but his tongue’s gone sluggish and the words melt to mush in his mouth. “Jist need tae, eh, get ma bearings, likesay.”

Somehow, he manages to make his way through the crowded pub without falling, weaving between tables and mumbling apologies whenever he jostles into anybody, but it’s clear from the start that he’s never going to make it as far as the door to the toilets. It might as well be thirty miles away, for all that he can reach it. It might as well be on the _moon_.

Instead, he ends up getting stranded halfway there, leaning up against the bar while the world spins around him, faces and lights and shadows all blurring together until he can’t tell which are which. An unwelcome wave of nausea washes over him and he squeezes his eyes shut, breathing shallow as he struggles to keep himself from throwing up—throwing up _what,_ exactly? When was the last time he had anything to eat? He’s still trying to remember when, eventually, his companion comes looking for him.

“Come on, Spud,” says Begbie, putting an arm around his shoulders and letting out a faint hiss of irritation when Spud, no longer trusting his own ability to stay upright, all but collapses into him. “Let’s go.”

Through the fog of alcohol, guilt manages to rise to the surface. “We can stay, if you want tae...ah don’t mean tae spoil the night, ken...”

Begbie laughs and Spud, who’s pressed up against his side, _feels_ it more than he hears it – feels the echo of it reverberating through the other man’s rib cage, feels the heat of it, the heat of _him_. The sensation is so unexpectedly pleasant that he laughs as well; a drunken giggle that he smothers by pressing his face against Begbie’s shoulder.

“No, the atmosphere in here’s shite, anyway. _You’re_ paying for the taxi home, mind – it’s the least you can do after all those rounds ah paid for, you tight-fisted fucker.”

Spud, who’s in no condition to argue, lets himself be bundled roughly out of the pub and into the cold night, half dragged and half carried through streets that slide by in a haze of flickering traffic lights, of rain-slick concrete and crumbling brick. The fresh air stings his face and revives him a little, and the nausea he felt in the pub has vanished entirely. In its place, there’s only an odd, giddy happiness – a weight’s been lifted from his shoulders and now he feels lighter than air. 

“It’s nippy as fuck oot here,” complains Begbie, stopping at a street corner as he tries and fails to flag down a passing taxi cab. 

“Aye, but _you’re_ not...I mean, you’re feeling pure warm, man.”

Begbie says something in reply, something short and sharp and exasperated, but Spud doesn’t quite hear him. He fades out for a while and resurfaces to find that they’re standing outside of his flat (a squalid little hole in the wall establishment, located in an _equally_ squalid council scheme) and Begbie is shaking him roughly by the shoulders, making his teeth rattle in his head. “— _keys_ , Spud! Come on, where’re your fucking keys?”

Spud feels the other man’s hands skimming down his sides – glancing over his chest, his ribs, his hips – and it doesn’t feel bad at all. In fact, it feels so good that he can’t stand it. He pushes away a little and does his best to fumble through his own pockets, but his keys are nowhere to be found. His nights are usually spent getting so wrecked that he ends up sleeping on other people’s sofas, other people’s floors, and he’s not really used to actually going _home_. Sometimes he almost forgets that he lives anywhere at all.

In the end, Begbie loses patience and solves the problem quite efficiently by kicking the door in.

Inside, the air is thick with dust and, when Spud goes to switch the light on, nothing happens – the electricity had been cut off months ago, after one too many unpaid bills. At the time, he hadn’t really minded; most of his electric appliances were either broken or had been sold in order to get money for more skag, and electricity had seemed like an unnecessary extravagance. Now, when they shuffle inside, bumping into one another in the gloomy darkness, a piece of paper rustles under Begbie’s boots. He stoops to pick it up, peers at it, and then passes it silently to Spud (who, even drunk, retains enough of a sense of self-preservation not to comment on his friend’s difficulties with reading). 

“Um, evict— ‘notice of eviction’,” he says, sounding the words out aloud for Begbie’s benefit and squinting hard as the printed letters blur and wander across the page. “So...so it means they’re gaunnae kick us oot, likesay. Ah mean, they didnae really like me much to begin with, and you’ve— _we’ve_ broken their door now and aw...”

“Dinnae worry aboot that. If they try, you jist let me know and we’ll sort the cunts oot, alright?”

Spud is aware that the landlord’s not a bad man and doesn’t deserve to be the target of Begbie’s wrath, but there’s still something about the offer that strikes him as oddly comforting. It feels like _somebody’s_ in his corner, _somebody_ wants to look out for him, and isn’t that what friends are supposed to do? Not run off, not leave you behind, not look at you like you’re just dirt, like you’re nothing at all. “Thanks,” he mumbles, and then, as a wave of vertigo grips him and his guts liquify into watery slop; “Um, ah’m really feeling sortay—jist unsettled in the stomach, likesay.”

With a snort of disgust, Begbie shoves him down onto the threadbare sofa and, laying back, Spud squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the world to spin itself back onto its regular axis. It feels almost like old times, getting drunk together like this, except he knows that it really _isn’t_. It’s new and strange and, worse, it’s frightening him: this unnameable thing between them, this Mark-shaped hole in the atmosphere. Dimly, he feels a brush of skin against his shoulder, his neck, the sharp line of his collarbone, but he keeps his eyes tightly shut and pretends to be asleep.

Maybe he _is_ asleep, and dreaming. Maybe he’s been dreaming all along.

“Spud?” Begbie asks, his voice so low that it’s barely more than a whisper. A few moments pass, and then, even more quiet; “Danny?”

He’s so caught off guard by the use of his real name that he forgets that he’s supposed to be sleeping. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Spud is still wondering what Begbie had meant to say when ( _genuinely_ , this time) he falls asleep. He wakes up only once in the night, head ringing like an electric drill, and doesn’t even manage to get off the couch before he’s throwing up. It takes him a while to register the fact that the other man is gone.

* * *

The next night that Begbie calls around, asking if he wants to go down to the pub again, Spud fakes a phlegm-filled cough and claims to have caught the flu. It’s not a difficult lie to sell – he certainly _feels_ sick. Sick and confused and desperately in need of some heroin. He wants to talk to Simon about it, but the man’s still in London and hasn’t even left an address. He _wants_ to talk to Mark about it, but he can’t, of course. Mark isn’t there. 

So, instead, Spud sits on his stained old mattress and wears the denim-and-tartan jacket and smokes a joint until the air in the little flat is so thick and sweet with smoke that he nearly can’t breathe, and waits until he starts to feel loose and easy. It’s a poor substitute for skag, but he eventually manages to get a half-hearted high going and, by concentrating hard, can even trick himself into imagining that Mark is sitting there beside him. He pictures his friend looking at him, grinning his ironic little grin, and feels a peculiar longing digging into him – a raw, bitter feeling. Like homesickness, only twice as sour to taste. 

“Ah’m not sure what tae do,” he says aloud, or _thinks_ he says aloud because it’s getting a little hard to tell what’s really happening and what isn’t, and the ghost of Mark Renton laughs.

 _Well,_ that’s _not exactly front page news, is it, Spud? Nothing tae write home about._

Spud takes another drag on the joint. “Aboot Franco, ah mean.”

Mark shifts around restlessly on the mattress, his fingers drumming a rhythm on his knees, and it occurs to Spud that there’s something very fitting about that – even when his friend isn’t really there at all, he’s _still_ impatient to be gone. The idea strikes him as absurdly funny and he has to wedge a hand into his mouth to stop himself from laughing.

 _Begbie’s easy,_ says Mark. _Listen, Spud, every fucker in Leith knows what Franicis Begbie wants._ We _both_ _know, and_ he _knows, too, so what’s the point in pretending we don’t?_

Spud isn’t entirely sure that he understands what Mark’s talking about, but it doesn’t seem polite to say as much. “Ah really miss you, man,” he says instead, the words spilling out like blood from a vein, like fluid from a syringe, like— 

_If you don’t put that joint out soon, you’re gaunnae set fire to your fucking mattress,_ says Mark.

When Spud comes back to himself, he’s got a splitting headache and the burned-down joint is singeing his fingertips and he gets ash all over his sheets trying to put it out. And Mark is gone, of course, but that isn’t particularly surprising – Mark Renton, after all, has _always_ been gone.

* * *

When Begbie suggests skipping the pub and just going back to his flat for a quiet night’s drinking, Spud isn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. On the one hand, going out in public together tends to increase the odds of some poor innocent bystander getting his head kicked in. But, on the _other_ hand, Spud is aware that spending the evening hanging around in Begbie’s humble abode – just the two of them, nobody to provide emotional support or distraction – means that _he’s_ more likely to be the one finishing the night with a cracked rib or a black eye. 

“Well?” prompts Begbie, impatient.

Sensing danger, Spud nods hastily. “Eh, right. Sound. Whatever you like, man.”

When they get to the flat, the whole place feels dead and quiet and empty. 

“Where’re June and the bairns?” 

“Gone down to her sister’s for the weekend,” says Begbie shortly, as cold and indifferent as if Spud had been asking him about his tax returns. The words ‘good riddance’ hang in the air, unspoken but painfully obvious. “She took the bairns with her and aw.”

There are a few children’s toys – little plastic trains, a few model soldiers, an old rubber dummy – left in a forlorn little heap in one corner of the kitchen. Looking at them, Spud feels a pang of pity in his chest as he thinks about ( _poor wee Dawn—_ ) Begbie’s unfortunate offspring, and he’s quietly relieved when the other man only grabs a few cans from the fridge and then leads him through into the front room. He resolves that he’ll have one or two, just enough to appease Begbie, and then find some excuse to slip away. Two or three, maybe. Just to be friendly. Just to stay on the man’s good side.

Five beers in, Spud is seized by a sudden, suicidal burst of courage and asks, conversationally: “What’s it like? Living wi June...wi a girlfriend, likesay.”

From the other end of the sofa, Begbie looks at him narrowly. “Why?”

“Pure curiosity, man. ‘Cause ah’ve never—not exactly _lived_ , you know? Not done the domestic thing wi a girl, not lived together, and it must be sortay nice...”

A strained silence settles over the room, broken only by a faint metallic creaking; Begbie’s fingers are digging tight into his half-empty beer can, making the aluminum crumple inwards. “Aye, it’s fine,” he agrees quietly, but he’s staring fixedly ahead now, avoiding Spud’s bleary-but-inquisitive gaze. “Not that it’s any fucking business of _yours_ , mind.”

“Right. Fair enough, catboy,” says Spud, unconvinced. Privately, he can’t imagine why anyone would want to settle down with a girl they didn’t truly love. Because Begbie _doesn’t_ love June, does he? He never talks about her with anything but contempt, never shows her any sort of affection. He’s never shown _anyone_ any sort of affection, except—

( _every fucker in Leith knows what Francis Begbie wants_ )

“Here,” Begbie says, startling Spud out of his thoughts and thrusting another fresh can into his hands. “Better get a fucking move on, right? _Sláinte._ ”

Spud nods his thanks, but doesn’t open the can. Instead, he sits quietly, turning it over and over in his hands and staring at Begbie like he’s seeing his friend for the very first time. In an odd way, he _is_. 

“—Spud?”

( _always sortay knew it, in a way. The way he used tae look at Mark sometimes, the way he used tae talk—)_

“Spud!”

With difficulty, Spud jolts himself back to reality. He’s been fiddling with the can for so long that, when he finally snaps it open, the beer inside is sloshing and foaming. “Sorry, man, ah spaced oot for a wee moment, there. Lost the plot.”

( _and he wis always getting so worked up over little things, likesay. Over jokes. Over anybody even suggesting that he and Mark might have—)_

“Aye, ah could see you had. Fuck’s sakes, Spud, you cannae even go five minutes without dozing off. It’s like talking tae a fucking toddler.”

The beer can feels hot against his fingers now, the aluminum turned warm by the proximity of his own skin, his own heat. He imagines that, if he were to reach out and touch Begbie now, the man would feel the same way. Unbearably, beautifully warm.

“The reason,” begins Spud, slow and unsteadily, like the words are being dragged out of him by some unseen power, “that ah asked aboot June is—is that ah’m thinking it might be nice tae live wi somebody like that. Wi a girlfriend. But it might also be sortay _lonely_ , likesay.”

“What are you—?”

“Ah mean, it might be sortay lonely, if you weren’t really wi the person you _wanted_. If...if you knew the person you wanted was somewhere else, and you couldn’t properly be together. And maybe you couldn’t even tell them you wanted them, ‘cause you were, likesay, worried or maybe a wee bit afraid or…”

“Spud,” says Begbie, in a voice as cold and sharp as steel. “Stop fucking talking, right?”

“And _ah’ve_ felt that way so many times, man, ah really have. And now ah’m thinking...ah’m thinking maybe _you’ve_ felt—”

“Ah’m not gaunnae tell you twice.”

Begbie is looking at him with real fury now, his jaw clenched tight and his hands in white-knuckled fists at his sides, but there’s the faintest flicker of something _else_ there, too. Something behind the rage, something that might even be fear. And Spud sees it, sees the brutal beating that must surely be imminent, but he’s so caught up in the earth-shattering strangeness of his freshly-gained knowledge that he can’t particularly bring himself to care. Now that he’s thinking about it, it doesn’t seem to matter if he ends the night in the hospital, or even – increasingly possible – if Begbie kills him.

 _Nothing_ seems to matter the way that it used to.

“It’s awright,” Spud says faintly, and, preparing himself for the worst, leans quickly across the sofa to kiss him.

For a brief moment, it’s only a little awful (the _normal_ kind of awful), because he’s misjudged the distance a bit and so it’s only the barest brush of lips, all fumbling and clumsy, tasting mostly of liquor and warmth. Then a shred of sanity creeps back into his head and it becomes the _worst_ kind of awful, because he’s realizing that Begbie has gone all still and stony against him, and all at once Spud’s insides are shriveling up with terror. He pulls back, eyes wide with panic as he opens and closes his mouth soundlessly, trying in vain to choke out an apology. 

Begbie hasn’t moved at all. He’s become a perfect statue, sitting rigid and tense on the edge of the sofa, his face sunk deep in shadow. It’s almost like nothing has happened, like the last fifteen seconds were a figment of Spud’s fevered imagination. Still, glancing down, he can see that the man’s knuckles have gone white.

So quietly that it’s almost drowned out by the hum of the radiator, Begbie says; “Get out.”

Spud barely hears him, deafened by his own racing thoughts, an incoherent babble; _ah’m deid, ah’m fucking deid, ah’m—_ “Eh?”

“Get the fuck out,” Begbie tells him again, his voice low and level and _strange_ , and Spud might be too stricken with terror to understand the words, but he certainly registers the _tone_. It cuts straight through the mess in his head and ignites some deep, instinctual survival mechanism, sending him shooting to his feet and straight into fight-or-flight panic. 

_Flight_.

“Ah’m—ah’m sorry!” Spud manages to stammer out, almost tripping over the rug in his haste to make it to the door. Staggering, he throws his hands up, trying to shield his face in case Begbie throws something at him. “Really, man, ah was jist trying tae—”

But Begbie isn’t looking at him. He’s still staring at the corner of the sofa that Spud has so recently vacated, face perfectly blank and perfectly cold. It’s almost worse than if he’d shouted, if he’d swung, if he’d _done_ something. But it’s like he’s been hypnotized.

Spud doesn’t feel much like waiting around for him to snap out of it. He runs and doesn’t _stop_ running until he’s three streets away, doubled over and wheezing with a stitch in his side and his lungs on fire. 

* * *

The next night, they don’t drink at all. At least, _Spud_ doesn’t. He’s too on edge, too sick with anxiety and excitement to even think about trying to relax, and besides, this seems like a keep-all-your-wits-about-you situation. Still, when Begbie arrives on his doorstep in the early hours of the morning, Spud gets the idea that his friend might have been enjoying a solitary glass or two all on his own. He can smell the whiskey fumes as soon as he gets the door open, hanging sour and raw as smoke in the air between them.

In the dim light of the hall, Begbie looks pale and tired and hunted, the ashy remnants of a cigarette still dripping from between his fingers. His eyes, dark and hawkish, have taken on that distant air again – he’s staring right through Spud, as if trying to read something written on the wall behind him. 

Spud feels like his intestines are tying themselves into knots. He grips the door tightly, already shrinking away from that stare, and twists his face into an apologetic grimace. He can almost _see_ the beating ahead. “Listen, man, ah’m really sorry, ah wis pure getting carried away last night—”

But Begbie cuts him off with a sharp shove, sending him staggering. “Not a word, right?” he hisses, pushing past Spud into the flat. “Not a single fucking word.”

“Aye—” Spud begins, and then stops himself quickly, nodding instead.

Begbie grabs him by the front of the shirt, fingers knotting in the worn fabric. Wincing, Spud braces himself for another blow and is startled when, pushing forward with a dizzying suddenness, the man kisses him instead. The sheer savagery of it is almost comforting – _this,_ not that frightening stillness, is what he’d expected a kiss from Begbie to be like. Biting and bruising. Numbing. 

Hardly able to believe what’s happening to him, Spud tries to reciprocate as best he can, parting his lips obligingly and then reaching up to skin tentative fingers through Begbie’s close-cut hair. He wants to slow the pace down a bit, because they’re not even at the bedroom door yet and he can already feel the zip of his jeans being yanked sharply down. He pulls back, tries to smile. “It’s...it’s awright, Franco…”

Begbie’s hands are shaking. “What did ah tell you? Dinnae fucking—jist dinnae fucking talk.”

“Right,” Spud tells him, and even dares to rest his hands on the man’s shoulders, rubbing at his arms in what he hopes is a soothing fashion. “Right, ah won’t, ah promise. Ah’ll be quiet and you can even pretend that ah’m...that ah’m someone else, likesay. You and me, man. Jist the two of us, right?”

“Danny...” says Begbie, the name so quiet that it’s barely more than a rattle of breath. 

_Ah’ve never heard him sound like this before_ , thinks Spud, dazed. Mesmerized by the way the man’s lips look bruised and wet, sore from kissing. _He sounds like he’s gaunnae start greeting._

He leans forward, hoping for another kiss – something gentle and sweet this time, to comfort them both, to banish the ghost of Mark Renton for good – but Begbie pushes him sharply away. Pushes him _back_ , until he’s pressed against the wall and the plaster is digging hard into his spine. Spud feels his vertebrae crack, feels the cold seeping in through the fabric of his shirt, and thinks wistfully about the mattress in his bedroom.

Still, he lets Begbie maneuver him around. Lets his jeans and keks be yanked down around his knees and, without being told, knows to turn and face the wall. He leans his head against the plaster and breathes deeply, trying to quiet the blood pounding in his veins. It’s cramped, sore, but he eventually manages to get a hand down to tug at his cock and _that_ helps quite a lot. The whole world gets smaller, softer; it shrinks down to a few inches of stained plaster and the familiar friction and slide of his own palm. Nothing else. 

Spud can feel rough and calloused hands slipping up under his shirt, skimming over his ribs, and experiences a brief stab of panic as it occurs to him that Begbie might mean to fuck him properly. He’s never actually done it before – not even when he was serving time in Saughton. Plenty of other things, but never _that_ . But, to his relief, the man seems content to only grind against him, his grip turning tight and bruising as he pushes and _pushes,_ his breath ragged in Spud’s ear. 

And, listening to him, Spud is seized by that odd sensation of _unity_ again. The feeling that he and Begbie are one and the same. That the same blood is shooting through their veins, the same _life_. When Begbie braces an arm against the wall and presses closer against him, Spud can feel the other man’s frantic heartbeat reverberating through his own rib-cage. When, finally, Begbie comes with a hiss of breath and a shudder, he thinks that he can feel _that_ too. It’s like thunder in his bones.

Then Begbie is away again, stepping back quickly and half-turning away as he buttons up his trousers. His breathing is still uneven, his hands unsteady, and every movement seems savage and jittery with energy. Nerves. Spud leans against the wall and watches him, still jerking his cock with halting, uncertain strokes. 

He wants Begbie to touch him. He never wants Begbie to touch him again. 

He wants—

He’s still trying to decide what he wants when, quite suddenly, Begbie turns to look at him again. He looks _at_ him, not through him, and his eyes are hard and sharp and dark as flint. Caught by that stare, _paralyzed_ by it, Spud feels the heat gather in the pit of his stomach, feels the breath catch in his chest. With little ceremony and no warning, he spills across his hand, shamefaced and gasping. 

Through the haze of his fading orgasm, he sees the blurred silhouette of his companion fade, then vanish. Hears footsteps and then the slam of the front door. “Wait,” Spud mumbles, but it’s too late; by the time the spots clear from his vision and the shadows recede, Begbie is gone.

Knowing that he’s too far gone to manage even the simplest of tasks, Spud doesn’t bother trying to do up his jeans again. He kicks them off and then drags himself as far as the bedroom, feeling his way along the wall like a blind man. Collapsing onto the filthy wreck of his mattress, he falls asleep almost at once and dreams that he’s not alone. He dreams that Mark Renton is kneeling beside him. That Mark is speaking to him, too soft and quiet to make out the words. 

He wakes up with a pounding head and the cold, blinding realization that it’s time to get back on heroin again.

* * *

For Spud, the next few weeks seem to pass strangely. The hours distort – they creep by sluggishly, stretch on and on for eternity. He watches the wallpaper peel from the walls of Swanney’s flat. He watches a fly crawl across the carpet. He watches the veins split and bleed under his skin. He watches and waits and wonders, paralyzed with terror every time he hears a floorboard creak or a door slam, if Begbie is going to come looking for him. 

But Begbie doesn’t.

When Spud finally dares to venture out into Leith again, he runs into Sick Boy in the street. The man is dressed in a new suit and looks cagey and a little skittish, like he’s considering walking right past and pretending that he and Spud aren’t acquainted. Reluctantly, cornered, he nods a greeting. “How’s life, Spud?” he asks, the syllables clipped and flattened – a neutral, sophisticated accent he’s clearly picked up in London.

“Can’t complain, man, can’t complain,” Spud manages, rasping the words past dry and gummed-up lips. It feels as if his throat is full of razor blades and, when he blinks, dark spots swim in front of his eyes. Nothing another hit won’t fix. “Eh, have you—have you seen Franco at aw lately?”

Sick Boy grins, sharp and triumphant. “You haven’t heard? The stupid cunt’s gotten himself thrown in jail again. Assault charges.”

“What?”

“Sure, our dear chum went mad and stuck a knife in some snotty university fucker. Nearly gutted him. He’ll be rotting behind bars in Saughton for a _decade_ , and good riddance.”

Weakly, Spud smiles. “Aye. Right on, catboy. Good riddance.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
